The
media - strategic
considerations
Kosovo
Solution Series # 2
PressInfo #
210
March
18, 2005
By
Aleksandar
Mitic,
TFF Associate & Jan
Oberg,
TFF director
Relevant background links
for this series here.
The pro-Albanian lobby program in
Brussels, Washington, New York and other Western capitals
has been up and running for decades now. An advocacy
campaign pushing for the independence of Kosovo as the
only alternative to bloody conflict and instability has
been the primary theme of this campaign, fought through
well-established consultants, PR groups, think-tank
lobbyists, contacts with key policymakers and the media.
The fight for the agenda-setting
and the context of the Kosovo issue has been set by
Albanian lobbyists during Tito's communist Yugoslavia -
well before anyone ever heard of a man called Slobodan
Milosevic. The quest for the independence of Kosovo has
been a long and strategic policy of the Albanian
community in Kosovo and abroad at a time when Serb
politicians in Belgrade and in Pristina were still loyal
to a "dream" of a multi-ethnic Yugoslavia and unable to
formulate a sustainable PR counter-attack against
Albanian nationalist/separatist demands.
This unbalance between Belgrade and
the Kosovo Albanians (but also later Croats and Bosnian
Muslims) in the means put into PR advocacy campaigns and
lobbying efforts has led to a one-sided media war in the
late 1980s and early 1990s. Unable and perhaps
uninterested to seek allies and promotion in Western
capitals, the official Belgrade lost the media war for
the context of the future Yugoslav successor wars even
before the first bullet was ever shot: the Serb demands
were sidelined and they were portrayed from the outset in
a negative context. Serb causes, views and victims became
"unworthy" in the eyes of key Western political and media
factors.
Serb frustration with Western
analysts and media led to a PR self-isolation, even
autism in certain periods of the 1990s, thus allowing a
vicious circle to develop in which international media
bias put more oil on the fire than contributed to a just
and long-lasting solution to conflict. No matter how
complex the conflict was, no matter the fact that crimes
were committed on all sides and a fierce war was fought
also by the Kosovo Liberation Army in which atrocities
could hardly be avoided, the Kosovo Albanians were simply
perceived as only "good guys", the Serbs as only
"bad".
With the end of the NATO 1999
bombings and the retreat of the Yugoslav army from
Kosovo, the Serb capacity to "cause damage" disappeared.
The remaining, unarmed Kosovo Serb population became
protected by NATO troops and a victim of an orchestrated
campaign of ethnic cleansing: killings of Serb peasants
in the fields, shootings of Serb children, kidnappings of
Serb workers, bombings of Serb houses, terrorist attacks
against Serb buses, forceful takeover of Serb apartments,
destruction of Serb monasteries and graveyards.
Observers, analysts, some
international staff and media promoted the view that this
was of course bad but it was a) not as bad as the
atrocities committed by the Serb side, b) the
international community should coach the Albanian leaders
who all came from the killing fields and build confidence
with them, and c) turn a blind eye as it was an
understandable, however quite deplorable, reaction to
what had been done to them by Belgrade.
Still again, and despite a change
of regime in Belgrade with the arrival of reformists in
power in 2000, the substance of the Western media
approach to the situation in Kosovo remained
unchanged:
1) Stories about the
violence against the remaining 100,000 Serbs and human
interest stories about their fate in Kosovo remained
rare. The same occurred with the situation of the more
than 200,000 Serbs and other non-Albanians who were
expelled towards central Serbia and could not return
to their homes.
2) Rather, more place was given
to bureaucratic, public relations-optimistic
statements offered by UN administrators about the
"constant progress" in the province.
3) Albanian violence was
justified through the formulation called "revenge
attacks".
4) Ethnic persecution became
"inter-ethnic conflict".
5) The division of the northern
town of Kosovska Mitrovica - the last remaining urban
area were Serbs still live in Kosovo - was seen as the
key obstacle to stability instead of the ever-lasting
campaign of anti-Serb violence throughout the rest of
the province.
6) The orchestrated campaign of
"ethnic cleansing", as NATO Admiral Gregory Johnson
called the three days of anti-Serb violence in March
2004, became ultimately seen as a result of "Albanian
frustration with the lack of progress towards
independence".
7) There was a clear failure to
explain who was behind the anti-Serb attacks. If the
international community accepts that there is an
orchestrated campaign of violence implicating 52,000
perpetrators/participants, there must be organizers?
Who are they, the Western media never
asked.
8) There was a lack of
explanation of problems in the Albanian society - from
the question of organized crime, drug trafficking to
the questions of ethnic intolerance. The capacity of
the Kosovo Albanian political and paramilitary circles
to export violence into neighbouring southern Serbia
and Macedonia was rarely examined.
9) The failures of international
administrators and peacekeepers in Kosovo were only
scarcely analyzed by the academic community and
mainstream media.
10) The drawing of the line and
the eternal question: "Is this what we fought for?"
became practically invisible in most of the Western
media reports.
Most of these media spins on the
reality of Kosovo were once again indications of a
planned and effective advocacy PR campaign by
pro-Albanian lobbyists. Western allies who had advocated
bombings as the means to create a solution and had
invested so much prestige and money in the international
missions in Kosovo saw it in their interest that a) this
general image was continued and b) that, by and large,
the media attention to Kosovo reduced steadily over time.
And other issues and hotspots, be it September 11, 2001,
other bombings and the war on terror attracted the
media's attention.
Still, the Albanian lobby suffered
a blow with the outcome of the US presidential elections:
Wesley Clark lost the Democratic nomination race, Richard
Holbrooke's bid to become Secretary of State in the John
Kerry administration failed, the hopes of George Soros
and the "Albright group" to become the key ideologists of
the reborn Clinton-era policy slant towards the Balkans
also miserably vanished.
On the other side, the problem
remained: Belgrade does not have an effective PR strategy
to counteract this impressively well-organized,
well-oiled and paid pro-Albanian lobby campaign, nor does
it follow a pro-active media approach which could put its
objective demands on the table.
Even Belgrade analysts do not agree
on whether Serbia has a lobby in Washington and Brussels,
let alone whether it is effective. Belgrade is thus left
behind again in a disproportionate media battle. Failing
to hear Belgrade's views in the media and among
think-tanks and analysts could however lead to a solution
that is likely to cause frustration, failure and
long-term instability in the region.
It goes without saying that a
central underlying problem is that Belgrade hitherto has
lacked a unified concept of the future of Kosovo and
seems to have little that indicates that it has a
pro-active negotiation strategy on which to base such a
media policy. Only a few days ago it was announced that
such a unified strategy has now been developed; at the
time of writing it is not known what its main elements
are.
The TFF Kosovo
Solution Series
# 1
Why
the solution in Kosovo matters to the
world
# 2
The
media - strategic considerations
# 3
The
main preconditions for a sustainable solution to the
Kosovo conflict
# 4
The
situation as seen from Serbia
# 5
The
arguments for quick and total independence are not
credible
# 6
What
must be Belgrade's minimum conditions and its media
strategy
# 7
Nations
and states, sovereignty and
self-determination
# 8
Positive
scenarios: Turn to the future, look at the broader
perspectives
# 9
Many
thinkable models for future Kosovo
# 10
Summary:
From "Only one solution" towards democracy and
peace
NOTE
Relevant
background links for this series.
Read also
Jake Lynch, Reporting the World
Reporting
Kosovo - violence now proves the stories missed in 1999
were the most important
TFF PressInfo 43, 1999
Kosovo/a
- Half Truths About Demography and Ethnic
Cleansing
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